1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus configured for forwarding data packets from a prescribed network, such as an Asynchronous Transmission Mode (ATM) network, to a destination node in an InfiniBand™ server system.
2. Background Art
Networking technology has encountered improvements in server architectures and design with a goal toward providing servers that are more robust and reliable in mission critical networking applications. In particular, the use of servers for responding to client requests has resulted in a necessity that servers have an extremely high reliability to ensure that the network remains operable. Hence, there has been a substantial concern about server reliability, accessibility, and serviceability.
In addition, processors used in servers have encountered substantial improvements, where the microprocessor speed and bandwidth have exceeded the capacity of the connected input/out (I/O) buses, limiting the server throughput to the bus capacity. Accordingly, different server standards have been proposed in an attempt to improve server performance in terms of addressing, processor clustering, and high-speed I/O.
These different proposed server standards led to the development of the InfiniBand™ Architecture Specification, (Release 1.0), adopted by the InfiniBand™ Trade Association. The InfiniBand™ Architecture Specification specifies a high-speed networking connection between central processing units, peripherals, and switches inside a server system. Hence, the term “InfiniBand™ network” refers to a network within a server system. The InfiniBand™ Architecture Specification specifies both I/O operations and interprocessor communications (IPC).
A particular feature of InfiniBand™ Architecture Specification is the proposed implementation in hardware of the transport layer services present in existing networking protocols, such as TCP/IP based protocols. The hardware-based implementation of transport layer services provides the advantage of reducing processing requirements of the central processing unit (i.e., “offloading”), hence offloading the operating system of the server system.
The InfiniBand™ Architecture Specification describes a network architecture, illustrated in FIG. 1. The network 10 includes nodes 11 including channel adapters 12 or 14; for example, the nodes 11 include processor nodes 16, peripherals 18 such as Ethernet bridges or storage devices, routers 20, and InfiniBand™switches 22. Channel adapters operate as interface devices for respective server subsystems. For example, host channel adapters (HCAs) 12 are used to provide processor nodes 16 with an interface connection to the InfiniBand™ network 10, and target channel adapters (TCAs) 14 are used to provide the peripherals 18 with an interface connection to the InfiniBand™ network. Host channel adapters 12 may be connected to a memory controller 24 as illustrated in FIG. 1. Host channel adapters 12 implement the transport layer using a virtual interface referred to as the “verbs” layer that defines in the manner in which the processor 16 and the operating system communicate with the associated HCA 12: verbs are data structures (e.g., commands) used by application software to communicate with the HCA. Target channel adapters 14, however, lack the verbs layer, and hence communicate with their respective devices 18 according to the respective device protocol (e.g., PCI, SCSI, etc.).
The InfiniBand™ Architecture Specification requires that a packet to be sent via an HCA 12 undergoes transport layer service, followed by link layer service. Examples of operations performed during transport layer service include constructing a transport layer header, generating a packet sequence number, validating service type, etc. Examples of operations performed during link layer service include service layer and virtual layer mapping (SL-VL mapping), link layer flow control packet generation, link layer transmission credit checking, etc.
However, arbitrary hardware implementations may result in substantially costly hardware designs. In particular, problems may arise when attempting to deploy an InfiniBand™ network to send and receive data between other networks. For example, wide area networks (WAN) often rely on ATM switching technology to handle information transfer within a single network or between networks. ATM is a connection oriented, cell based switching technology that uses 53-byte cells to transport information. However, conventional approaches to connecting the InfiniBand™ network to a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) or a Wide Area Network (WAN) may require an Asynchronous Transmission Mode (ATM) edge device that recovers an IP packet from ATM cells using a prescribed adaptation layer processing. The recovered IP packet then would be sent via an IP network to an IP router having a presence on the InfiniBand™ network. Such an arrangement can be substantially costly for smaller business consumers. In addition, disadvantages arise from converting between a connection-based transport protocols (e.g., ATM and InfiniBand™) and packet-based protocols such as Internet Protocol.